ARTE, POLÍTCA E IDENTIDADE NO PROCESSO DE DESCOLONIZAÇÃO E AUTOAFIRMAÇÃO EM PAÍSES AFRICANOS
ARTE, POLÍTCA E IDENTIDADE NO PROCESSO DE DESCOLONIZAÇÃO E AUTOAFIRMAÇÃO EM PAÍSES AFRICANOS
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.6592402048
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Palavras-chave: racismo; identidade; descolonização, história e artes visuais.
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Keywords: racism, identity, decolonization, history, visual arts.
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Abstract: This text shares studies carried out in a Modern and Contemporary African Art course offered by the Imperial College of London in the second semester of 2023 and addresses actions that were part of a historical process in which, through cultural production, the Idea was to positively impact the images and representations of Africa and Africans as a reaction to racism and oppression suffered by Black people during and after the European colonization. Thus, in the first decades of the 20th century, during the long process of decolonization of African countries, the striking figure of Leopold Sedar Senghor emerges as one of the intelectuals who, in 1930, launched the Négritude movement to combat French imperialism, assert pride in the African identity and cultural heritage and as a way of decolonizing the mind, therefore, all the practices of every day life impacted by a culture that claimed to be hegemonic. If a historiography centered on men tended to credit, in addition to Senghor, Léon Gontras Damas and Aimé Césaire as founders of the movement, a more updated historiography recognizes the importance and influence exerted by women artists and intelectuals, as well by the Harlem Renaissance movement (USA, 1920s). A growing movement of resistance and struggle has since strenghtened, with the contribution of critical thinking of a wide range of afro-diasporic intellectuals and, more recently, the creation of Black History Months (USA, 1970s; UK, 1980s). The concept of affirming African (and afro-descendant) identity through the arts expands accross Europe and the African continent, as one of the ways of fighting for self-affirmation, receiving worldwide publicity in events such as 1-54 (One continent – 54 countries). It is a long and complex process, involving subjectivities and local specificities, which requires, for a better understanding, in-depth studies, as the motivations that give rise to it – racism agains Black men and women – persist, with violence, until the current days.
- Ana Maria Rufino Gillies